Bernard Lee With apt coincidence the Buxton Festival had scheduled this recital for a stormy Saturday because it was as tempestuous inside as it was out. A wildly eclectic affair, it began in the vocal turbulence of scenery-chewing accounts of Where Shall I Fly from Handel’s Hercules and two Brahms songs, including the fabulous Von ewiger Liebe. The world-renowned, Worksop-born soprano turned mezzo-soprano can never have been said to being temperamentally suited to singing Lieder in either voice range – or, arguably, Handel. Admittedly, the singer was getting over one virus after another but allowing for lingering indisposition, the basic interpretations were all wrong. The voice actually sounded in terrific shape and four Tchaikovsky songs gave more suitable scope for the dramatic intensity Plowright has always sung with, especially The Bride’s Lament – sung in Russian, so Op 47/ 7 may identify it better. Manuel de Falla’s Seven Popular Spanish Songs were given the Plowright treatment, and very colourful it was, too; and three Kurt Weill pieces, Der Abschiedsbrief, Je ne t’aime pas, Surabaya Johnny, were compellingly sung. Having feared the worst after her Brahms, Britten’s O Waly, Waly was a thing of restrained but positive beauty, and Stanford’s La belle Dame sans merci and Frank Bridge’s Love went a’riding, similarly, were vibrantly and extremely well sung. Philip Mountford vividly succeeded in the unenviable task of contending with some pretty demanding, stylistically diverse piano music and staying on the same wavelength as the diva as she roamed the stage with a variety of dramatic gestures.

Bernard Lee If you take Rossini’s opera on its own merits, without reference to Verdi’s later masterpiece, let alone Shakespeare, it has much going for it. However, it needs better espousal than it gets in this strangely staged concert performance in the Buxton Festival, on the first night at least when, in short, it was a visual shambles. The opera has some extremely fine music in it, its most sustained dramatic and musical glory being the third and final act in its tragic version, not the one with the happy ending, but with a tenor in the title role (as originally written) for greater impact. Buxton has opted to do the ‘Malibran Version’, which casts a mezzo-soprano as Otello and although Sara Fulgoni tackles the part with heroic commitment, Rossinian tessitura is perhaps not entirely her forte. It is for tenor Alessandro Luciano as Rodrigo (who looked petrified), a major player in the opera, and he has the top Cs when his rather tight singing voice opens up. Nicky Spence in the lesser role of Iago is an admirable tenorial foil and has considerably more presence. Kate Ladner turns in a superbly sung, dramatic performance as Desdemona; Carolyn Dobbin also sings particularly well as Emilia (a bigger part than in Verdi); and there is a firmly sung Elmiro from Henry Waddington. The chorus needs to be much larger than 16 voices, when one or more is not singing a walk-on solo, and an augmented Northern Chamber Orchestra (in the Opera House pit) again offer terrific playing in response to the idiomatic conducting of Stephen Barlow. As the festival’s artistic director, though, he needs to do something about the visuality of it all.

Bernard Lee Ominous clouds hovered as we drove into the High Peak town for a day of song. First stop, the Pavilion Arts Centre where baritone Roderick Williams was singing his bread and butter repertoire, English song, an 18-item programme commemorating the centenary of the outbreak of World War One. Not an altogether sombre affair. Somervell’s martial The streets sound to the soldiers’ tread, among the first settings from Housman’s A Shropshire Lad, was there, as was Gurney’s rollicking setting of Masefield’s Captain Stratton’s Fancy – mind you, so was In Flanders. William Denis Browne’s To Gratiana (Richard Lovelace) revealed flights of originality and Ernest Farrar’s (Finzi’s teacher) setting of Rossetti’s Silent Noon loses nothing to the famous one by Vaughan Williams. Like Butterworth, they were composers killed in the conflict. Poets that never came back were not forgotten: Rupert Brooke – Ireland’s super setting of his war sonnet The Soldier; Wilfred Owen – Futility, sparsely set by Elaine High-Jones (b1927); and Edward Thomas – a musically thorny Adlestrop by Anthony Payne (b1936). Poets that did figured, like Gurney – Pain, powerfully set by Ian Venables; and the entire splendidly planned affair was superbly executed with considerable artistry, as you would expect from Williams, and his wholly admirable pianist Gary Matthewman. With the clouds still lingering with uncertainty, a couple of hours later it was on to St John’s Church and earlier English fare, Dowland and Purcell, the bread and butter repertoire of Michael Chance, and happily proving it – none of the occasional sour tone or hit and miss pitched notes of two days earlier in Gluck’s Orfeo. Here, the countertenor was in his element singing to lute accompaniment (Paul Beier) and giving voice to Dowland, including Flow my tears; Come away, come away sweet love; I saw my lady weepe; In darkness let me dwell; Lady, if you so spite me, with unerring, expressive eloquence and ethereal tone. The same applied to his Purcell, including Music for a while, O solitude and a superbly sustained account of The Queen’s Epicedium and, outside, the sun was shining brightly.

Bernard Lee Gluck’s masterpiece is the Buxton Festival’s second staged opera and can be summed a little more briefly than The Jacobin. The first thing you see looking at the stage are letters, OEFRO, on five large slabs suspended from the flies. The opera underway, the chorus detach them and move them around the stage to create images of props or scenery over its duration. They even light up! The five hooks holding them having ascended, 16 eventually descend on a wooden ‘clothes line’ with sets of dark garments on them which the chorus members put on over their orfeo-emblazoned t-shirts. Garbed as furies, the washing line disappears upwards. The garments are visibly taken off, and the t-shirts, at the back of the stage for the next scene, Elysium, and the chorus is now sporting beach-wear, some of it skimpy, and smoking fags. At least some light and colour is on display (if not always gratifying) instead of the otherwise prevailing gloomy black, grey and white atmosphere. That should give some idea what to expect in Stephen Medcalf’s darkly dramatic production. Nevertheless, it contains a lot of fussiness and added business, such as Euridice poisoning herself in the opening dumb show. He surely cannot be the first to envisage Orpheus as a rock musician, with less certainty, as an ageing, long-haired, bearded one. A guitar-toting Michael Chance rises to the challenge of playing him and his voice is still full. There are signs, however, that this music is starting not to lie easy on it with the odd sour note and gear changes to a regularly used chest register. The two women are excellent. Barbara Bargnesi, a girlish looking Euridice, produces first-rate singing, nowhere more so than in her recit and aria in act three. Daisy Brown, given almost continuous non-singing stage presence by Medcalf when not otherwise involved, is an outstanding Amore in every respect. The Festival Chorus, of which she is a member, again excel and the playing of Northern Chamber Orchestra is solidly reliable, while Stuart Stratford conducts a not as-Gluck-would-have-heard-it account of the score.

Benda (centre, glasses, white coat) tries to rehearse his serenade in The Jacobin

Bernard Lee If you suspend belief, not an unusual exercise in opera, that the French Revolution did not, in fact take place in the 1790s but in the 1930s, Buxton Festival’s staging of Dvořák’s opera is a runaway triumph. The first night audience thought so to go by the reception at the final curtain. The glory of the production in every respect is the execution of the music magnificently conducted by Stephen Barlow with belief in, not to say love of, every note. Indeed, the reception appeared to leave him on the verge of blubbing. But then, the finale of this opera with the haunting theme of Benda’s serenade ringing out triumphantly can do that to you. With one curious exception, his cast is superb. Although she sings the beautiful lullaby in act three well enough, the normally excellent French soprano Anne Sophie Duprels often looks and sounds dramatically and vocally uneasy (caused by performing in English, perhaps?) as Julie, the wife of the returning self-exiled Bohuš, a virile voiced, John Cleese look-a-like in Nicholas Lester. Nicholas Folwell avoids letting Count Harasova’s lascivious steward Filip slip into comic caricature and James McOran-Campbell was a notable discovery as the scheming Adolf. Andrew Greenan’s resonant, black-voiced Count was made even more impressive by the fact that he learnt the role at very short notice in three days after Matthew Best became ill. The highly reputed, now veteran Bonaventura Bottone contributes a delightfully characterised and sung performance as the local choirmaster Benda, and the two young lovers, Anna Patalong’s Terinka and Matthew Newlin’s Jiří are well matched, although the latter is a trifle short on lung power at times. The open-throated singing of the 16-member Festival Chorus is simply outstanding and all the more so when the same number of amazingly talented representatives from the Kinder Children’s Choir joins in. Similarly, the playing of the augmented Northern Chamber Orchestra is terrific to the extent that you tend to forget a slight shortage of higher string sound. Essentially, Stephen Unwin’s well-oiled production it is not time-specific. The villager/ peasants could belong to any era or country in the last 250 years or so and there are next to no props to date it, beyond an upright piano in act two and the 1930s/ 40s costuming of four characters, although why Filip is done up militaristically seems a total irrelevance.

Ben Gaunt Although I love the other pieces in the programme, particularly Finlandia and Marche Slave, I was mostly drawn to tonight’s concert to hear a new work by Sheffield-based composer, Jenny Jackson. Jackson is a member of Platform 4, a composer collective whose other members (Tom James, Tom Owen and Chris Noble) performed the gargantuan piano part central to Moot: for Orchestra and Piano, six hands. The work opened atmospherically, with sliding timpani rolls and low, moaning brass, followed by a marvellous bell-like texture replete with bright piano chords. At times, the orchestration was chaotic, brutal, and uncompromising, interrupted by moments of sparse beauty. Although not a concerto in a conventional sense, Moot did contain a cadenza: a brilliantly clunky piano chorale that was somehow both bizarre and moving. Martin Lightowler did a fine job in conducting a very challenging work; it was the finest performance of the evening, proving that new music can be embraced by amateur ensembles and orchestras.

Bernard Lee After the faintest suggestion that the renowned a cappella vocal quartet was warming up in its opening item, thereafter all was in the fields of vocal Elysium. The piece and the following one, French 13th century works by the ubiquitous ‘Anon’, were revelatory in their flowing melodic utterance given the Latin texts are religious; ergo, you might have expected them to be set as plainchant – not a semblance! Even more remarkable, and the performance of it, was Ah! Gentle Jesu by an English composer known as Sheryngham (c1500), an extremely effective, extended verse/ refrain dialogue between a penitent sinner and Christ on the Cross. As most people will know by now after 40 years, the Hilliard’s approach to early music does not follow fussy period performance practice but it is historically informed, as they say, and stylistically it sounded right. The Medieval colour of the group’s vocal sound was ideal for the four traditional Armenian Sharakans arranged in the early 20th century by Vartapet Komitas, while more recent works in the concert were written for the Hilliard’s unified vocal prowess. The most recent, from last year by Arvo Pärt with the single repeated line Most Holy Mother of God, save us, is a masterpiece of varying solo and unified harmonic sounds. Katia Tchemberdji’s much more wordy and lengthy Aus dem Psalm 69 (2007) was full of dynamic vocal contrasts, a touch too many perhaps to appreciate in one hearing. Wider contrasts and colour came in the form of five hymns and prayers Alexander Raskatov drew from the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom for Praise (1998) and set as sort of quasi-ritual incantations. Eminently worthwhile works tailored to the Hilliard’s inner vocal virtuosity and blended homogenous sound, it remains to be seen if other groups have the wherewithal to take them up after the ensemble retires at the end of the year.

George Parsons To continue the Broomhill Festival, pianist Hannah Donkin, a final-year music student at the University of Sheffield, played a well thought-out programme of three works linked by a common reliance on dramatic contrast. Donkin began with the last of Lera Auerbach's 24 Preludes, Op. 41, an arresting opening to the recital, contrasting Messiaen-like eruptions with gentler tonal passages. This gave way to Chopin's beautiful Fourth Ballade in F minor, Op. 52. The performance had the right sense of momentum throughout, though occasionally needed a bit more flexibility to convey the melancholy of the main melody. The rest of the recital was devoted to Kabalevsky's Third Piano Sonata in F major, Op. 46. The war-inspired drama of the work was well matched by Donkin's self-assured playing which, throughout the three movements, demonstrated the combination of virtuosity and sensitivity needed to characterise the constant confrontation of the music. Overall, a well-chosen programme, excellently played by an emerging talent from whom we hope to hear more.

Bernard Lee Placing the imaginative, telling strains of Holst’s Two Psalms at the end of the concert’s first part and Finzi’s Sinfonia da Requiem at its conclusion tended to relegate what had gone before each to also-rans. Mendelssohn’s Hear My Prayer in its version with orchestra just about survived eclipse by the Holst due in no small measure to soprano Ella Taylor’s fresh-voiced singing, particularly her instinctively natural shaping in ‘O for the wings of a dove’. Brahms’ bardic Four Songs for female choir, two horns and harp came over as insignificant, and Max Taylor’s newly composed So Sing (In memoriam –George Swindells) was skilfully wrought and effective, but no more. Ditto, Yaron Hollander’s setting of Siegfried Sassoon’s Everyone Sang, while Parry’s There is an Old Belief was a fish out of water divorced from its fellow ‘Songs of Farewell’ before the admittedly more substantial Finzi, the evening’s undoubted highlight. How much of it is Finzi, or may be Philip Thomas who orchestrated it in 1984 aside, it sounded like Finzi – melancholic (naturally), with a debt to the harmonic language of Vaughan Williams and Parry. The Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus (promoter of the concert) sang splendidly throughout with generally excellent balance. Fewer voices would have allowed clearer diction and been beneficial musically, especially in Brahms’ three-part, close harmony writing. Eira Lynn Jones was the high calibre harp soloist in the Brahms and the two uncredited horn players did not disgrace their confraternity. A little stronger projection by the vocally gifted young baritone Matthew Palmer would not have gone amiss in the Hardy setting in the Finzi. Made up by National Festival Orchestra and Hallam Sinfonia members the orchestra was fine, getting to play Elgar’s Serenade for strings without vocal interference, and SPC director Darius Battiwalla marshalled all with a minimum of fuss.

Tom Owen With this hefty programme of sumptuous American music, the Hallé were really spoiling us. The Overture to Bernstein's Wonderful Town set the scene glamorously, but was ultimately overshadowed by the rest of the concert. The bolted-on sax quintet was perhaps a little underpowered; thereafter, the playing was exemplary and completely engaging. Copland’s Four Dance Episodes from Rodeo were all at relatively safe tempi, but the scenarios were all utterly vivid. Neither the Bernstein nor the Copland had the most swagger or hustle, or the most 'epic' Hollywood string sound; instead they were performances in which not a note was wasted, with Elder revealing the sentiment implicit in the score. Moments like the 'Maria' section from the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story brought a lump to the throat with the sheer beauty and clarity of the orchestral colour. Ginastera's impressionistic Harp Concerto was something of a revelation and a very clever down-tempo contrast just before the interval. A most misty piece full of quietly dazzling orchestration effects, it often seemed to drift in to a trance-like state. It featured some fine playing from the Hallé's own principal harpist, Marie Leenhardt. It also transpired that the Hallé were holding a big card up their sleeve for the finale, as the final passages of Gershwin’s An American in Paris were obscenely lush, with Elder apparently stopping time momentarily to allow an outrageous trumpet note-bend just before the climax. It was a glorious few minutes of really 'milking it' that had been earned completely by the profundities elsewhere in the concert.